A VIMS team is challenged by the bewildering array of plastics and plastic additives in use in homes and businesses around the world—and now dispersed via trash and microplastic debris into seemingly every ecosystem on Earth, from the depths of the Marianas Trench to the polar ice caps.

A long-term partnership between York County and VIMS has helped the historic riverfront community of Yorktown stem shoreline erosion, weather several powerful storms, and maintain a popular swimming beach.

Each evening, a multitude of small sea creatures rises from the inky depths to feast on microscopic plants growing in sunlit surface waters. At dawn, they reverse course, descending to spend another day under the cover of darkness.By almost any measure, this daily migration rivals the great seasonal movements of caribou or arctic terns. Yet its magnitude was virtually unknown until the 1940s, and many of its mysteries remain.

VIMS professor John Olney has worked for more than a decade to help restore American shad to Chesapeake Bay. These fish, once as iconic to the Bay as blue crabs or oysters, are now only familiar to scientists, commercial netters, and fly fishermen.